Monthly Archives: April 2021

Loving truly

True love – or perhaps more accurately, the failings of untrue love – has been the subject of more songs and stories than have ever been counted. How are we to judge the true from the false? John has a no-nonsense approach when he says “ This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.” (The start of this week’s reading, 1 John 3:16-24).

It is hard to deny that this is a compelling demonstration of love and, as the earlier verses of the chapter have argued, one that should provoke a response. Imitation is a form of admiration. What we worship will shape our lives and characters. So we are told that our love should reach out to those in need.

We might want to use the excuse that our offering is so insignificant compared to the needs we see on television news and documentaries. It is easy to forget that the earliest Christians lived closer to hunger and homelessness than we do, yet were known to be generous. If modern communications make us rapidly aware of disasters and shortages on the other side of the world, they also enable an informed and professional response. We do have a responsibility to give, generously and repeatedly, and to do it in the most effective ways we can find. We need to make sure that our giving is a significant proportion of what we have available.

Our response to those in need should never be limited to charitable giving, however. We need to be informed, and to use our votes and our campaigning weight to encourage medium and longer term answers. At the same time, we are faced by a climate emergency. We can lobby, and give, but we also need to change our personal behaviour to reduce our impact on the environment and encourage others by our example to do the same.

Even that isn’t enough. The needs will change from time to time and place to place. At the moment racism is in the spotlight, and needs us to affirm the value of every life. There are issues of housing provision, children denied a secure family upbringing, modern slavery, unemployment – and I will have missed several. We cannot be closely involved with every issue, but need to deal with those closest to us, and to deal with them within the love of God. That does not want to make the wrong suffer, nor to expose people to shame. Rather, it looks for the restoration of a proper order, with relationships restored and life more nearly as it should be. It looks to the Kingdom of God, where God rules, and we are able to enjoy our place and our life within God’s love.

Fraud?

There is a thing called the “imposter syndrome”, which leads well qualified people to think that they are a fraud, and do not deserve the position or qualifications they have achieved. It may be that, having been shut away in Covid lockdown, more of us will feel strange as we take up former work or responsibilities.

Certainly, when John writes of Christians as the loved children of God ( we read 1 John 3:1-7 ) there will be some who feel “What, me?”. It is amazing, and sometimes challenging, to recognise ourselves as having this status. Imperfect as we, and others we join in our congregations, are, we are still given this identity. Children of God, with all that implies for now and the future.

It is this gift of love that motivates a Christian response. Being loved, we want to learn to love. Being forgiven, as we still need to be, we come to ask questions about how, if God forgives us, then others can also be forgiven. If God can forgive them, how can we withold our forgiveness? And so the questions go on. A God of truth is trustworthy and promise keeping, so we should learn to be the same. A creator God values the world, and it is time we looked to the impact our lives have, and waste and spoil less.

John knows that some people in those communities claim to be perfect, while others insist that what they do has nothing to do with their “spiritual” state. He will have none of it. Christians are God’s loved children; they remain liable to make mistakes, even serious ones, and need forgiveness. At the same time, the love that reaches out to us demands a response of imitation as we value the God who offers so much. Getting it right is not easy, but the effort is essential, and rewarding!

Reality, not scapegoating.

Our world is very confusing. Sometimes it encourages you to do just whatever you feel like. Then without warning it is mercilessly looking for a scapegoat, because somebody must be responsible for what has gone wrong. It seems the first century was rather the same, and John writes to his Church in a very realistic way. We read 1 John 1:1-2:2 (that’s the first letter of John, not the gospel).

“Now the message that we have heard from his Son and announce is this: God is light, and there is no darkness at all in him. If, then, we say that we have fellowship with him, yet at the same time live in the darkness, we are lying both in our words and in our actions.”

1 John 1:5,6 GNB

Is the Christian community supposed to be different? Is it realistic to expect us to live in the middle of our society, and hold other values? Yes. We are called to be light in darkness, and salt in rottenness.

  • we have the details laid out for us in the Christian Way: love, truthfulness, submission to one another, work, generosity, honour . .
  • we have the motivation. God has loved us and done for us what we could never do, our response in thanksgiving is invited.
  • difference is vital to our witness. We are not a club, doing things that keep us happy, but God’s people in the world, advertising his plans.

But just as we are coming to terms with the call to be different, we come to:

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and there is no truth in us. But if we confess our sins to God, he will keep his promise and do what is right: he will forgive us our sins and purify us from all our wrongdoing. 10 If we say that we have not sinned, we make a liar out of God, and his word is not in us.

1 John 1:8-10 GNB

Part of the Good News is forgiveness – not forgiveness once, then perfection. We continue to fail, and while we can’t be complacent, we mustn’t stop trying, nor pretend to a perfection we don’t have. We have to be realistic. We shall fail as individuals, and as a community; sometimes just struggling to make progress, sometimes more dramatically. We all remain capable of getting it badly – seriously, scandalously – wrong, and we need to know that to guard against it.

There is an argument over

And Christ himself is the means by which our sins are forgiven, and not our sins only, but also the sins of everyone.

1 John 2:2 GNB

Traditional translations (KJV) have “propitiation”, while some prefer “expiation”. Expiation, they say, removes the “defilement” of sin, while propitiation is about buying off an angry God with sacrifice. That’s not a Christian idea – but neither is the idea that God just has to chill out and forgive. Sin is not some ritual defilement; it is the very personal breakdown of relationship, caused when we rebel against God’s rule and direction. It is very personal, and serious – to the extent that it cost Jesus his death. John Stott writes, Christian propitiation “is an appeasement of the wrath of God by the love of God through the gift of God.” I think we need the language of propitiation, understanding that there is nothing petty about God’s response to human sin.

However you take it, Jesus is the pattern and the answer. Wherever his people gather, the calling of Jesus remains:

  • to be a holy (different) community
  • to be a humble community, that knows its failures, and looks to Jesus for forgiveness

Concentrating the mind

In the days when I was a student among Christian friends, we were sometimes asked, “What would you say to a man in the 5 minutes before he is taken to be executed?” As long as it remains theoretical, it is an interesting question. Nowadays, I suppose, some would simply want to avoid trouble, and get him shot without argument, but I think we were a bit more assertive. I was reminded of this by Paul’s opening of 1Corinthians 15:1-11

“My friends, I want you to remember the message that I preached and that you believed and trusted. You will be saved by this message, if you hold firmly to it. But if you don’t, your faith was all for nothing.”

1 Corinthians 15:1-2

And the message is very simply summarised – nothing about morality, liturgy, lifestyle – all those are consequences.

“I told you the most important part of the message exactly as it was told to me. That part is: Christ died for our sins, as the Scriptures say. He was buried, and three days later he was raised to life, as the Scriptures say.”

1 Corinthians 15:3-4

Simple as that. Jesus died for our sins (and the death was real, because he was buried). Jesus was raised to life (and the rising was real, because there are a whole string of witnesses, including Paul). He didn’t just die. Most people manage that, one way or another, but he died for our sins. For the detail in that, we are told “according to the scriptures” Paul means the Old Testament, because the New Testament doesn’t yet exist, so especially Isaiah, and the other passages which help us understand significance of the Cross.

Jesus didn’t just appear to people, like a ghost, or as some outpouring of group hysteria. He came to individuals and groups, in a variety of places and times of day. Often unexpected, sometimes unrecognised for a time, they believed in his life. Their conversations, and reconciliations, were real. Many would die; nobody suggested a fraud. This is the earliest Christian Creed (apart from “Maranatha”, and the phrase “Jesus is Lord”, perhaps). It reminds us our our roots, and Paul tells us of the need to stay with this faith if we wish to benefit from it.

So, “What would you say to a man in the 5 minutes before he is taken to be executed?” It would be easy to get it wrong: nerves, or especially in our culture, arrogantly saying, “Do this . .”

I think my best suggestion would go something like this:

“Excuse me, I’m Andrew Knight. I don’t know if there’s anything you particularly want, but I wonder if I could tell you a story? (It might stop there if there was a negative answer, but I might be able to go on:)

It was a long time ago, but there was a man who lived an exciting life, helping many, and winning respect from ordinary people. He made some enemies, and although he did nothing wrong and they had to fix his trial, they got him condemned and executed. His friends were in despair, shocked and frightened, but slowly reports came in that he was alive. They couldn’t understand; some had seen him buried. But it was true, Jesus, somehow, wonderfully, was alive. He appeared to different groups, in different places, they talked, ate, and their lives changed. The story has spread, and there are still those like me who believe it.

I hope I never have to tell it in those circumstances, but, like all of you, I have to try and find ways of saying things to people every day. One of the challenges is to find the time, and place, and way of saying, the really important things. It isn’t easy, but it’s a good start when you are clear about the basics:

“My friends, I want you to remember the message that I preached and that you believed and trusted. . . . . Christ died for our sins, as the Scriptures say. He was buried, and three days later he was raised to life, as the Scriptures say.”

1 Corinthians 15